I'm Baaaaack
I got back from beautiful, beautiful Maine on Thursday. My audience sent me hatemail on Friday for not having posted something already. Here it is Chrissie. Live from Salisbury Beach, CT - or it was live once anyway....
Salisbury State Park – June 27, 2007
Looking out the small window at my neighbor camper, three feet over, I can feel the heat emanating from the ground, from the air, from the tin can I’m sitting in. My neighbor, a woman about my own age, thinner than me, to me she looks older – of course, that’s probably just vanity, ego, and my old friend self-protective denial talking. When it’s too hard to bear, there’s always the ostrich maneuver – I poke my head in the sand. Anyway, she’s moving slow, my neighbor, weakly lifting her heavy hair from her melting forehead. She hauls herself up, unsticking from her chair, to pour more steaming water in the plastic pool for her stationary kids, too hot even to squabble. The pool has seen better days, as have a number of other things around here. Our neighbor’s place looks like some kind of screwy construction site, with long planks of old and new pressure treated lumber stacked next to the pool. There are many other such incomprehensible piles located in close proximity to rusty unroadworthy trailers from the 70s that look like they could use them. The reason for these monuments to Lowes and home improvement is revealed at twilight with a smell like burning electrical wires and a feeling of homeless huddled in boxes under bridges. Though it is easily 90 degrees, our neighbors huddle companionably around the fires, close to the ground so they can breathe below the smoke line. It looks like the New York skyline around here at dusk.
When we arrived, there was a line to get in, trailers and buses stacked to the next intersection, drivers comparing theories in the grass next to their sporty pin-striped Outbacks, Keystones, Big Horns, Cougars, Coyotes, and Jaycos – resembling much more their parking lot origins than anything created by Nature- She’s rolling in her grave of plastic, I’m sure. Some had been waiting for two hours to get in. The entrance was lovely, long marsh and squat pines, wild roses everywhere and butterflies. Our shock when we saw our site is indescribable. We could not figure out the draw, to say the least. Our neighbor explained it, along with the big metal rings sunk in concrete on either side of our home away from home. It’s tradition. He’d been coming here for thirty years with his family and friends. Looking around, extended family surrounded us. Double sets of grandparents slowly walked limp children around in carriages, chatting like the old friends they were. Us? We just fought mostly, and hid in the air conditioning, waiting like lobsters for our time there to end.
Looking out the small window at my neighbor camper, three feet over, I can feel the heat emanating from the ground, from the air, from the tin can I’m sitting in. My neighbor, a woman about my own age, thinner than me, to me she looks older – of course, that’s probably just vanity, ego, and my old friend self-protective denial talking. When it’s too hard to bear, there’s always the ostrich maneuver – I poke my head in the sand. Anyway, she’s moving slow, my neighbor, weakly lifting her heavy hair from her melting forehead. She hauls herself up, unsticking from her chair, to pour more steaming water in the plastic pool for her stationary kids, too hot even to squabble. The pool has seen better days, as have a number of other things around here. Our neighbor’s place looks like some kind of screwy construction site, with long planks of old and new pressure treated lumber stacked next to the pool. There are many other such incomprehensible piles located in close proximity to rusty unroadworthy trailers from the 70s that look like they could use them. The reason for these monuments to Lowes and home improvement is revealed at twilight with a smell like burning electrical wires and a feeling of homeless huddled in boxes under bridges. Though it is easily 90 degrees, our neighbors huddle companionably around the fires, close to the ground so they can breathe below the smoke line. It looks like the New York skyline around here at dusk.
When we arrived, there was a line to get in, trailers and buses stacked to the next intersection, drivers comparing theories in the grass next to their sporty pin-striped Outbacks, Keystones, Big Horns, Cougars, Coyotes, and Jaycos – resembling much more their parking lot origins than anything created by Nature- She’s rolling in her grave of plastic, I’m sure. Some had been waiting for two hours to get in. The entrance was lovely, long marsh and squat pines, wild roses everywhere and butterflies. Our shock when we saw our site is indescribable. We could not figure out the draw, to say the least. Our neighbor explained it, along with the big metal rings sunk in concrete on either side of our home away from home. It’s tradition. He’d been coming here for thirty years with his family and friends. Looking around, extended family surrounded us. Double sets of grandparents slowly walked limp children around in carriages, chatting like the old friends they were. Us? We just fought mostly, and hid in the air conditioning, waiting like lobsters for our time there to end.
Stay tuned for the next installment of EAST COAST RAMBLINGS....
(Sorry, it's late. That's the best I could come up with.)
posted by Shannon at 11:09 PM
3 Comments:
Welcome home, friend!
You're back! Say 'yay'. XO
Welcome back!
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